Many identity management systems are known in the art including Microsoft's Passport™, the Liberty Alliance, and the identity management system described in detail in Canadian Patent No. 2,431,311 and its corresponding applications including U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2003/0229783A1, each owned by Sxip Networks.
Identity management is of great concern in the electronic commerce field because it allows an electronic vendor or service provider to provide a user with customized services and further allows the vendor to track user behavior. From the user perspective, identity management permits a user to retrieve previously stored identifying information. In the absence of any identity management system each individual use of a service would be accompanied by selecting a series of settings that could not be maintained in the following session. For example, in the case of an on-line purchase the lack of an identity management system would entail requiring a user to provide all identifying information, including credit card numbers, billing and shipping addresses for each and every purchase. This is commonly regarded as a nuisance to consumers, and serves as a detriment to on-line commerce.
One skilled in the art will appreciate that though the following discussion generally relates to electronic commerce applications of identity management, a number of other non commerce related services, such as customisation of a news site, registration for access to a newspaper, and maintenance of a desired display configuration for an electronic discussion site, all make use of identity management. For these services the ability of a user to have a single-sign on for multiple services is a high priority.
To ensure that a user can use a single user ID for a plurality of services, and to provide what is commonly referred to in the art as “single sign-on”, a second generation identity management and authentication solution was created. This solution is typically referred to as a hierarchical identity management system, and is typified by Microsoft's Passport™ service.
In contrast to the hierarchical nature of the Passport™ service, Liberty Alliance systems are referred to as distributed. These distributed systems have a plurality of identity storage providers, and vendor sites communicate to the identity storage provider of their user through a complex secured communication back channel that employs a number of different cryptographic techniques requiring the maintenance of complex and large key rings.
However, according to the specification of the Liberty Alliance, only a defined set of user identity information is stored at the identity storage providers. Thus, E-tailers must still question users about information not stored by an identity storage provider. Additionally, public and private encryption keys require each identity storage provider to be able to perform numerous computation intensive tasks for each data request. Additionally, a sophisticated key management system must be employed as the size of the web of trust increases. One skilled in the art will readily appreciate that the number of identity storage providers in a web of trust cannot scale infinitely. Though it is possible to implement a system whereby each identity storage provider can trust every other identity storage provider when there is a small number of identity storage providers, it is unlikely that such a system can be implemented in a reliable fashion when the number of identity storage providers scales into the tens of thousands.
From the perspective of user, the model presented by the Liberty Alliance has a number of drawbacks. A user's single sign-on abilities are somewhat restricted. A user is assigned a unique user ID that identifies them to their selected identity storage provider.
Both Passport™ and the Liberty Alliance provide E-tailers and other sites requiring user authentication with pair-wise unique identifiers (PUIDs). PUIDs allow the e-tailer to store information and build a profile on a user, while preventing two e-tailers from easily correlating their databases to determine user activities and patterns. PUIDs in the liberty alliance are assigned by the identity storage provider holding the user profile, and cannot be matched to the user account by any other identity storage provider, thus if a user chooses to change identity storage providers all the site specific settings at each E-tailer are lost. This handcuffs users to an identity storage provider providing no more opportunity for portability for most users than the single source Passport™ does. Furthermore, the purpose of the PUID assigned by either Passport™ or the Liberty Alliance can be overcome by correlating other information such as credit card information.
As described above, conventional identity management systems employ back channels between the identity data providers and other sites in the networks. These back channels are provided as a one size fits all solution. Thus, in order to provide security for sensitive information, the back channel is encrypted. If the identity management system is distributed, the channels make use of complex and unwieldy key rings to ensure security. However, if the only data that the user is submitting is non-sensitive, such as e-mail or postal address information, the data does not require a secure channel. Many sites requesting this information do not operate on secure servers and moving to such a system would be considered onerous. It would be desirable to offer a mechanism to allow a user to interact with the data store in a secure fashion to ensure protection of authentication information, but to then submit information to other websites over insecure channels, through preferably only after user approval.
In addition to requiring a secure server, conventional identity management systems requiring the scripts or code operating at a vendor website to be modified to interact with the defined channels and data passing techniques specified by the network. Though this may not be a problem for new, well funded entities, changing a large established code base is a daunting task if the site is already live and functioning. Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a system to allow an online merchant to very slightly modify an existing site to join an identity management network.
Conventional identity management networks provide no mechanisms to easily incorporate a website's existing user base. Conventional identity management systems require users to lose their history at a website to use the identity management network in conjunction with the website at which an existing account is established. This is a detriment to a website operator interested in tracking the historical behaviour of users. It would be advantageous to offer a mechanism to allow user history and preferences to be maintained for existing users of a website as they join the identity management network.
In conventional hierarchical identity management systems, all user data is centrally stored, thus creating a central location from which data can be obtained if the system is compromised. Furthermore, users must have a level of trust with the central party so that they trust that the stored data will not be leaked or otherwise revealed. In a distributed system, there is a plurality of user data stores. If a single store is compromised only the data about its users is revealed.
In both cases the user data can be encrypted prior to storage to allow for added security in the event that the data store is compromised. However, the user must still have a trust relationship with the data store operator to know that the data will not be decrypted inappropriately. Further, the user must trust the data store operator is capable of securely storing the decryption key so that it is not made available inadvertently.
Furthermore, in a distributed identity management system the ability to increase the number of identity service providers is important, so that users have a variety of parties to choose from, preferably some of those entities have a pre-existing trust relationship with the user. However, as with all complex systems and networks, it is difficult and time consuming to create a secured server to store user data and conform to the requirements of the identity management network. Thus, it would be desirable to provide an identity management server that requires a minimal amount of user customization, and allows the secure storage of user information so that the data cannot be inadvertently, or otherwise, released by the identity management system without user approval.
As identity management systems begin use in a variety of fields and niche markets, new security and authentication mechanisms, along with other such advances, become necessary to account for previously unforeseen needs. It is, therefore, desirable to provide an identity management system with novel authentication and security mechanisms.